


mutual solace.

by themissinglenk



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin
Genre: Cowboy AU, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-23
Updated: 2014-04-23
Packaged: 2018-01-20 12:11:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1509989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themissinglenk/pseuds/themissinglenk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He kissed a bolo and a pearl rosary every night and whispered only once, “The tie’s from the first man to teach me the ways of this world. The rosary’s from the first man who loved me. The key was my mother’s.”  // imported from tumblr, cowboy AU</p>
            </blockquote>





	mutual solace.

**i.**

His father voted in the nineteenth quadrennial presidential election, and he voted for Lincoln if that said anything about the man.

His father was a doctor.

His father went west in 1887 promising to send for them once there was a great big house ready to receive them out there where the mist hugged the pines and the great big houses overlooked the water and the logging factories and the college. Everyone said _west_ was _adventure_. His father had called the west _divine opportunity_.

His father never wrote back when Eren sent that Mamma had died.

His father would have known what killed her, anyway, but there was no answer to be found in the blood she choked on because if it _was_ consumption, wouldn’t Eren have suffered, too?

They did not live in the hills like the prairie people, but there wasn’t much past the wildflowers, either.

Uncle Hannes said, “Little guy, you gonna go west with me to find your old man?”

His mother gave him her key, her fat gold key. Identification. Family keepsake. Key to a great big house in the west.

Eren went west with Uncle Hannes.

* * *

**ii.**

“Look at ’em go,” his father muttered under a dreamy sigh, dipping and squinting and warming the back of Jean’s neck with a calloused palm, and Jean would have appreciated the way the sunlight glinted off the waves of green in the valley like a sea between mountains had the valley not been full of shimmering rippling steeds.

It wasn’t the horses his father meant, though. It was the _meste_ _ñeros_ , the Mustang runners. Whistling and trilling and swarming the horses to castrate and sell down in Mexico.

The smell of his father’s tobacco pinched at his nose hairs. The weight of his father’s hand was powerful; the weight of his dream was even heavier on Jean’s heart.

It wasn’t that Jean wanted to be a Mustang runner. He just wanted the scent of the shining coat; he wanted the tickle of the mane; he wanted the shiver of powerful muscles under his hips; he wanted the trust in those dark eyes, turned his way; he wanted the wind in his hair and the dirt in his eyes as they ran laps under the endless stars.

In the sweet verdant valleys of California, he felt he caught a glimpse of heaven or some other place of paradise, watching the wild horses run before the _vaqueros_ snatched them up and broke them.

But that—all that was a long time ago, when his father was still bronc busting.

Now they were just ranchers. And unfortunate ones at that. His father spit out the kitchen window and shook his gin and snarled, “Barbed wire! Barbed wire!” And his mother said, “Jeanny, there’s gold up north in those lumber towns, you could bring good times back to the family again…”

* * *

**iii.**

They arrived just in time for the Great Fire of 1889.

They arrived just in time to realize everyone had heard of Dr. Jäger but no one had seen Dr. Jäger since a while before the fire and Dr. Jäger certainly wasn’t at the college at all, what ever were you talking about?

After the fire, Eren farmed rats and Uncle Hannes drank too much.

A pretty boy named Armin with stains on his knees and stains on his cheeks and more rat tails in his bouquet than Eren could collect in a week looked down at Eren from the upper level of downtown, tipped his pageboy cap like a top hat, and hummed, “Wanna make some real money?”

Up Yesler was Madame Smith’s, where the ladies were not ladies at all but they still held weekly parties at the Ackerman Saloon with the seamstresses from Shiganshina’s, and that was where Eren met Mikasa, and Mikasa told him, “They tried to shanghai me four years ago. I murdered a man with my bare hands.”

And Eren fell in love with her like he fell in love with Armin when Armin kissed him in the salon of Madame Smith’s.

* * *

**iv.**

Life as a cowboy required one to sharpen the blades of perception and strategy. One had to be a wily son of a bitch to survive on his own from trade post to trade post. One had to know how to play a mean game of cards, keep his wits around pretty working ladies, and sleep with one eye open and a finger on the holster. One had to learn to keep company of the stars, the horse, the dog, and keep oneself warm when the howling of the wolves rang in your ears. One had to learn to use a knife like a third hand, to hunt like a trapper, to hold conversations with oneself before one went mad following the calls of the birds and wondering if one might ever see one’s parents again in golden glory.

In a watering hole not far from Merchant’s Café, a tiny western warrior in a black coat and regal cravat drew a pearl-handled pistol on him and as the entire tavern attenuated to a ringing silence, the petite man with the cravat said, “This is my town. If I killed you right now, would you have any regrets?”

And staring down an elegantly carved barrel, hand twitching at the small of his back where he hid the single-action his father had given him on his sixteenth birthday, Jean had sobered up real quick. Gone was the flush of alcohol. Gone was the dizziness of sweet sin and flirting with the tavern girls. Gone was the buzz of finally arriving, cold was the fear that there was nothing here for him but his own unfortunate end because the west was a cruel, cruel place, and held not as much for a cowboy as it did for a thug. Especially not here where the Klondike boom had finally penetrated the lumber mills.

With tens of eyes on him, Jean had cleared his throat and looked the big bug right in the eyes. How old was he? Old enough to have no qualms gunning down an eighteen-year-old baby of a man?

“Just one,” Jean croaked, eyes wide, skin ice. Even the mustachioed man at the piano had halted the chipper background music. “I’d regret not getting a taste of what tail this place has to offer a lonely guy like me.”

Laughter. 

Laughter from one mouth; all the others were empty in fear.

The focus in the room swung to the corner, where on the stairs from the rooms above a young man had drifted down to join the tense and tipsy audience. Outside, the city was alive and the night throbbed with shouts and clatters and the rush of the nearby water. Here, there was only silence, and the man on the stairs finished buttoning up his shirt only halfway and waltzed across the dusty floor to wind an arm around the waist of the man with the pearl-handled pistol. And if Jean had felt moments from death only breaths before, he felt moments from life again now, heart jumping to his throat. Ah, God. Was leaving California not a journey to find himself masked as a journey to save his doomed family? Alas he did not find himself in those captivating amber eyes, assessing him over the shoulder of his lush rival. He utterly lost himself. This new face was young, maybe only his age; this new face was beautiful in a way a man was rarely beautiful; this new face was soft and sun-kissed and full of the magic of moonlight; this new face made crowbait out of all else around in comparison.

“Legendary Levi here tends to favor Madame Smith’s,” this new face purred. “Right, Levi?”

Legendary Levi shrugged and shucked his pistol and bought Jean another drink.

Legendary Levi said, “Well, you better get going then.”

* * *

**v.**

The moral compass of the world here was exotic, or dysfunctional, or jammed.

The streets were divided in places, not on level planes, accessible here and there only via rickety ladders where horses might well stomp on your heads or wheels might crush your knuckles or mold might dissolve the steps underfoot and send you plummeting a full story back down to wooden sidewalks.

The beautiful boy said, “My name’s Eren Jäger and I’m gonna show you the best-kept secret of this place.”

On the way out into the damp Northwestern dark, Jean caught a glimpse of himself in a looking glass. Denim, faded vest, broken buttons, dirty trousers, scuffed shoes, sun-bleached hair. He was far from presentable. He probably smelled like horse and sweat. Eren’s laughter rang in his ears like a siren’s call and he chased him through ribbons of moonlight and dancing lamplight, weaving through musty crowds and the vicious calls of a frontier town. He chased him up and down those awful ladders, around corners, following those sultry glances, that sky-blue shirt, those slate-gray slacks, those hanging braces dancing off his narrow waist. With each step another layer of the rancher Jean Kirschtein from California was carved away; it was an impatient, self-sufficient, eager and fearless dreamer that followed Eren Jäger into the thick cramped secretive shadows of Madame Smith’s. It was a cowboy. It was a wild Mustang. It was himself as no one else had allowed.

* * *

**vi.**

It was not a peg-house, try as wild west politics might to insist as much. It was just a brothel catering to a very specific persuasion.

There was velvet, and satin, and tassels, and Oriental partitions, and porcelain, and crystal, and creaking crooked halls, and skeleton keyholes, and winding banisters.

“This is Reiner,” Eren introduced to Jean, sweet naïve little Jean who’d come for gold but had found this instead. “We call him our ‘Titan.’ Like Greek books. You know, because of his large…endowments. This is Annie. You ever heard of One-Eyed Charlie, Mr. Kirschtein? Well, Annie’s like that except she goes by Annie and she’ll scoop your eyeballs out with a silver spoon if you look at her wrong. She looks damn good in some feathers and garters, though. Don’t doubt it for a moment.”

“Please,” the baby-faced cowboy whispered, looking as wide-eyed and hesitant in the halls of Madame Smith’s as a child interrupting his parents’ conversation, “don’t call me Mr. Kirschtein. That’s my father. I’m Jean.”

“You look overwhelmed, Jean.”

“I’ve never—I—”

“Have you never seen a man in drag, cowboy?”

White as a ghost, Jean shook his head. Eren’s eyes drifted the span of his physique. There was no shame in finding satisfaction in those shoulders, those hands, that lean waist, the bulge in the pants. Well, cowboy turned gold-chaser had never seen a man in drag, but he certainly didn’t seem displeased by it.

“How much you willing to spend, pretty boy?” Marco cooed from the baluster above, all freckles and combed hair. Changing out an Edison wax cylinder, Armin laughed his lovely angel laugh from near the drapes, currently preoccupied by the soliciting kisses and wandering hands of a client for the night. Berthold peeked in from the hall, lighting an opium cigarette. Madame Smith herself watched from behind her Chinese fan—watched very carefully, steely eyes hooded. Appraising, evaluating, possessive, protective, _business_. Levi would be in to see him soon, anyway; anyone who was anyone knew Levi and Madame Smith saw the sunrise together every morning, in each other’s arms, in silk sheets and imported pillows.

“Oh no,” Eren said, grabbing Jean by the wrist. “This one’s all mine.”

* * *

**vii.**

It wasn’t about breaking the horse.

It was about becoming one with the lines of its body, of flying across open spaces like you did not exist at all except through your matching heartbeats. It was about being free. It was about living. It was about the horse trusting you like you trusted it.

Eren Jäger was begging to be broken, if he was not broken already.

* * *

**viii.**

The miners mined the gold and the city mined the miners and traders came and went and the most cowboy-friendly place to keep lodgings was between Shiganshina Seamstresses and Madame Smith’s, and a hop-skip-and-whistle away was the place to post mail and lie to your family saying you were finding lots of gold and working a roundup or two in the foothills when really the ladybirds and prostitutes had taught you to hustle good enough to survive four months in the west on your own.

* * *

**ix.**

Four months was also a very long time to go with just your hand as companion.

In these parts, a man was shot for sodomy.

But sodomy was not mutual solace, and sodomy was not Madame Smith’s, and sodomy was not Eren Jäger catching his face in his hands and kissing him full on the mouth in a slant of sullen midday sunlight in an upper room of a brothel of men.

“What are you even doing here?” Eren Jäger demanded. “Are you here for gold, or what?”

“I don’t care about gold.”

“What do you care about?”

“Horses.”

“Then why the hell’d you leave the open range?”

“Barbed wire,” was all Jean could echo, limp fist in a pathetic _damn you!_ gesture.

Eren practically jumped the divan and snatched Jean’s hat up off the armchair. Plopped it right on his head, lifted his chin like he was ready for a cavalry salute. Instead propped his hands on his hips and hissed, “This isn’t a courtship,” all fine dark hair and flashing eyes, and sloppy collar on a velvet lapel. “When the hell are you going to lasso me up on that bed and take me like I’m yours?”

“When you’re mine,” Jean croaked, mouth dry. It escaped before he could contain it. He cast his eyes elsewhere. He avoided Eren’s prying stare. He wished he was not so hopeless and helpless and enchanted by the black magic of this place. He wished he could travel through time and place and show Eren what he’d seen that day, the sunlight hitting the valley and the horses moving through the grass like spirits of the wind. If he tied Eren up like Eren begged, he’d get rope burns that would last him months.

“I want to be yours, cowboy,” Eren Jäger whispered. “I’m tired of being everyone else’s. I’ve been everyone else’s for so, so long. Too, too long. I wish I could be like you and just ride around on my own, one with the rain and the sky.”

* * *

**x.**

Eren took him to a place the city hadn’t touched yet and said, “Let’s ride.”

Jean tried to help him onto the back of his mare. Stubbornly, Eren fought it. It was a lot of accidental groping and kicking and maybe an elbow to the mouth but Jean didn’t seem too bothered by a busted lip. His eyes were dancing like the stars, swimming like fish in the thick velvet sky.

Jean watched him ride his horse in the dark and Eren loved the way the mane felt tangled in his fingers.

“Go! Go! Woah, girl! Good girl!”

Even though he didn’t need it, Eren let Jean catch him when he slid down off his panting horse’s side, one hand with the reins and the other at the small of Eren’s back. Let him wind him into the crook of one arm, fold him in against his chest like they’d once been a whole that had been severed some time ago and condemned to wander in search of the other half.

Eren kissed Jean’s horse right near the silky nose. When she nibbled affectionately at his fingers, it tickled, and he laughed, and it tickled like the way Jean’s lusty kisses tickled the nape of his neck, the way Jean’s heartbeat stirred him between the shoulder blades, the way Jean’s hard dick pressed against his thigh from behind, restrained sure but quite obvious. And Eren nuzzled against Jean’s horse like Jean nuzzled against his shoulder and alone in the dark like this, just heartbeats and sighs and the pull of the wind, Eren understood how someone could want to be a cowboy.

* * *

**xi.**

“Save your horse, give your horse a God damn break, Jean—”

In the cool sweet grass under the blanket of night, Eren rode him like he was out to break him.

Oh, the tables turned.

Eren guided his hands down his pants and Eren filled every part of him with his scent, his glow, his heat, God damn, oh, Lord, have mercy on this poor lonely soul, sun-kissed skin, star-kissed lashes, wicked licentious smirk and double-daring eyes. This was the devil in the Garden of Good and Evil and all the lust of his breed from Adam down seemed to pool in his belly, stiffen between his hips, throb against the front of his trousers.

Rolling hips, bruising fingers, supple thighs, sticky skin, shouts of pleasure bouncing off the distant mountains it seemed, off the dome of the purple sky, and the dirt under his fingernails was like a reminder of the dirt on his soul but oh God, did damnation make him feel so alive. Bareback, spit-slick fingers, the knotting of lust and trust captivating him, corrupting him.

Eren let him come inside him.

* * *

**xii.**

Eren looked good in his fringe.

He looked good kissed naked by the moonlight, wearing nothing but Jean’s hat.

He stretched like a cat from the bed he’d invited Jean to live in to the lamp, turning it down, stuttering, out.

He kissed a bolo and a pearl rosary every night and whispered only once, “The tie’s from the first man to teach me the ways of this world. The rosary’s from the first man who loved me. The key was my mother’s.”

* * *

**xiii.**

Eren Jäger broke him.

* * *

_**end.** _

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> omfg no stop don’t look at me i did it okay – but in all seriousness, did you expect anything else from me? if you’re ever in seattle, please please please check out the underground tour, it is completely worth it and you can think of this fic.


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